


Mailbox 1973 - 1975 (The Letters to Nowhere Remix)

by pocky_slash



Category: X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014) - Fandom
Genre: Canon Disabled Character, Epistolary, M/M, Post-Canon, Remix
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-18
Updated: 2014-08-18
Packaged: 2018-02-13 15:28:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,750
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2155668
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pocky_slash/pseuds/pocky_slash
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes - not very often - Charles sends a letter, a postcard, a small gift to a post office box in Chicago.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mailbox 1973 - 1975 (The Letters to Nowhere Remix)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [pearl_o](https://archiveofourown.org/users/pearl_o/gifts).
  * Translation into 中文 available: [邮箱1973-1975（致无人） Mailbox 1973 - 1975 (The Letters to Nowhere Remix)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/2817875) by [saisland](https://archiveofourown.org/users/saisland/pseuds/saisland)
  * Inspired by [Mailbox 1973-75](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1718048) by [pearl_o](https://archiveofourown.org/users/pearl_o/pseuds/pearl_o). 



> Getting it in under the wire. Is it uncouth to thank Pearl for telling me to remix this in the first place, given the veil of anonymity? Thanks to her all the same, and to **heyjupiter** for the quick beta.

It's two weeks before Erik's birthday when Charles catches sight of the book. He and Hank are in the city, picking up some supplies for the school. The copy of _Moby Dick_ is behind the counter with the other rare books, and Charles can't stop looking at it. 

He manages to get down to the corner of the street where they've parked the car before he says, "No, wait a moment," and turns the chair around to head back to the shop.

It sits on his desk for a week, mocking Charles for his sentiment, before he finally sighs and calls Raven.

"I don't know how to get in touch with him," she says brusquely. "I've ended that relationship." 

There's an awkward silence before she adds, "But...we kept a post office box in Chicago. It's been a long time. I don't know if he still checks it."

Charles gets the address anyway. He waits two more days before he posts the book, inscribing a blank white card with simply, _Happy Birthday._

***

He waits a week, then two. School starts up again. He wonders what he's waiting for, if he really thinks Erik will send a response.

During the day, his time is dedicated to teaching and leading and helping and encouraging. At ten o'clock every evening he puts his papers away, pours himself a drink, and stares at the spot on his desk the book occupied during its short stay in his office.

He doesn't let himself brood for more than an hour. He's in bed by eleven. He thinks he's allowed that one weakness.

A month, two, three, and he's all but forgotten. He's long past waiting for acknowledgement. For all he knows, Erik has forgotten all about the PO box, hasn't even seen Charles' gift, will never see it.

And besides which, what would he even say if Erik wrote back?

***

Six months later and he meets Peter's sister, Wanda. It takes him all of half a second to see a truth that was hidden from him by his lack of telepathy during his first meeting with Peter. Peter's been suspended from school and Wanda's home from boarding school for winter break, allowing herself to be talked into a visit that Peter promised her she'd never forget.

They're both enrolled by the end of the day, and that evening, Charles sits at his desk and takes out a pen and a pad of his personal stationery.

***

_Dear Erik,_

_I was so afraid that the return of my powers would mean the return of sleepless nights and the sharp pain of those around me. Instead, it's quite the opposite--I sleep more soundly than I have in ages, comforted by the bubbling excitement and soothing dreams of my pupils. Hank has theories upon theories about telepathy and emotions and psychology, and while, in the past, I may have been just as eager to dissect my experiences and discover the intricacies of how my power works, these days I am content enough to just be grateful for the respite._

_I wonder, sometimes, where you are and what you're doing, if you're safe. I don't let that keep me up either, however. You can take care of yourself and you've made it clear that you don't need the care that I have offered in the past. You've made your choices._

_Today I enrolled two new students. Well, new to the school. One of them is young Peter Maximoff, who helped us break you from prison nearly a year ago. He brought his sister, Wanda, who also possesses a most extraordinary gift. I wish you could meet them both, for many reasons._

_They've put you on my mind. I'm hoping to exorcise those thoughts by writing, by sending this letter somewhere you're unlikely to even see it, but I cannot pretend you're never far from my mind in the first place._

_I sleep well without you, but never as well as I did during those months you slept next to me._

***

He mails the letter in the morning. He thinks that will be the end of it. 

He should know better.

***

_Dear Erik,_

_I read about you in the newspaper this morning. Tired from staying up too late reading essays, I came down to breakfast half-asleep and opened the paper and felt my jaw drop. The only people in attendance were Hank and a young woman who's been teaching romance languages, thankfully. I don't know how I would have explained myself to the students._

_I know well enough to take the news with a grain of salt--I know you better than anyone, and I could tell their story was only half true. Still, I cannot abide the other half and I cannot understand what you think to accomplish by doing these things. I cannot imagine that the path to acceptance should be piled with so many bodies._

***

Charles takes a class of the youngest children to the American Museum of Natural History on a field trip. In the gift shop is a statue small enough to hold in the palm of his hand, metal twisted intricately and beautifully.

He has it boxed up and sends it out with the mail the next day.

***

He teaches a course the next fall that Alex dubs "Mutants 101" and uses a revised, expanded version of his thesis as the textbook, re-written to a seventh grade reading level and more cavalier about the existence of mutants and the history of those they've encountered. At the end of the semester, he puts his own copy, annotated and highlighted, into an envelope and has Hank take it to town with the rest of the mail.

***

Erik shows up from time to time in the news. He doesn't reach out otherwise, doesn't contact the school, doesn't even contact Raven, whose rallies and demonstrations for mutant rights are less violent and more visible.

When the children ask questions about him, Charles changes the subject. A coward's way out, maybe, but if he can't be honest with himself about Erik, how can he explain him to a child?

***

He goes with Armando to recruit in San Francisco and stays, by chance, across the street from the hotel where he stayed with Erik all those years ago.

 _Thinking of you,_ he writes on the postcard he sends at the end of the trip, a sunny view of the Golden Gate Bridge.

***

He finds an antique cigarette lighter at a charity rummage sale. Erik only really smoked after sex. He wonders if that makes the gift untoward, but it's metal and heavy in his hand and when he carries it in his breast pocket for two long days, it makes Erik feel inexplicably close.

He sends it anyway.

***

_Dear Erik,_

_Sometimes I feel you in my head. Is that strange? Telepathy may be my gift, but I've always felt your presence is so large, so encompassing, that you were in my mind as much as I was in yours._

_I hear your opinions as I write curricula. I feel your dismissal as I shake hands in Washington. Sometimes I think I can see you talking to the most troubled students, the ones who most need your approach, who need someone who can test them in a way I can't._

_You could do so much good, Erik. It used to hurt, knowing you were wasting away, wasting your potential, wasting your life, because that's what you're doing every time you put your life on the line to make a point--wasting all the good you can do in the world, the life you could have lived._

_It doesn't hurt any longer. Now I'm just tired._

_I'm not inconsolable the way I once was. I don't brood over you. I don't weep for what was lost. I miss you every day, Erik. I miss what we had. But I have a life here, a purpose, a school, a family I've cobbled together from those around me. I'm content, happy even._

_But I do miss you. I do love you. And I do hope that one day, someday soon, you'll find what you're looking for, whatever it is to put to rest this fiery drive to burn the world down, whatever it is that keeps you from me. I hope, one day, someday soon, that you'll come home._

***

On his birthday, Charles wakes feeling strangely out of sorts. He accepts congratulations and hugs from the students and staff, alerted to the date by Hank. He accepts token gifts from the students he's closer to--drawings and art class sculptures, birthday cards and sweets. He feels distant from it all as he wheels into his office after his morning classes and sorts through the pile of mail on top of his desk.

There's a card from Raven, some official letters from the state regarding the school, some bills, some advertisements and, at the bottom, an envelope addressed in a familiar hand.

His heart lurches into his throat. For a split second, he considers throwing it out or waiting until after school, but before the thought is even fully formed, his hands have moved against his will and he's tearing open the envelope.

Inside is a familiar blank white card. _Happy Birthday_ is written in his own hand. Beneath it, in Erik's tight, sharp scrawl is, _And many happy returns to you as well._

Charles stares at it for a long time. He fights both the urge to tear it up and to write back immediately and at length. In the end, he stares at it for so long that he has to rush to his next class, the card left abandoned on his desk.

He'll deal with it later. Tonight, after dinner, or tomorrow, Saturday, when he has the day to himself. For now, he's not going to pick at what it means, on the lingering shame that all of his letters weren't going unread, or the joy that they have been read all along. He's not going to ponder Erik's intentions, to wonder how he feels about this, how he feels about Erik after all this time.

Instead, he's going to accept this as the present it is. It's his birthday, he's surrounded by his students in the school that he built for them, and someone he loves, whom he thought was lost to him, has reached out to wish him a good day. 

It's going to be a good year, he can tell.


End file.
